[Illustration]
"Painters of sporting subjects have often portrayed, from memory
necessarily, a bird in the act of being shot, either immediately
before or after the event. Here, at last, is an actual photograph of
a wild duck at the moment of receiving its _coup de grâce_. It was
in a lonely, low-lying bay on the West Coast of Ireland. Ducks were
homing in fair numbers overhead on their way to the large lakes lying
inland, when, telling my photographic friend to get well behind me and
snap away as fast as he could, I advanced a few paces and also merrily
snapped away. Upon developing the series at home that night we found
that between us our snaps had resulted in our obtaining the photograph
here reproduced. It shows clearly that a duck--well shot--falls like
a plumb to the earth, head foremost, and may serve to correct some of
the imaginary pictures of similar incidents."--Mr. Dudley M. Stone, 8,
Chichele Road, Cricklewood, N.W.